Pandemic Darlings The pandemic economy, in original documents
Home Profiles SmartBiz

Profiles · Companies and entities

ProfileCompany or group

SmartBiz

Lender or loan platform

PPP
Type
Company or group
Role
Lender or loan platform
Programs
PPP
Updated
  • Type: Online SBA-loan marketplace and bank-enabling technology platform; later an SBA lender under the SmartBiz Bank identity.
  • Legal entities: SmartBiz Loans (San Francisco); presented as SmartBiz Bank on the company's own site.
  • Founded: San Francisco; the company began in online consumer lending and pivoted to a bank-centric SBA 7(a) marketplace by the mid-2010s (Banking Exchange interview with its CEO).
  • HQ: San Francisco.
  • CEO: Evan Singer — CEO through the pandemic and, per the company's board/management page (our copy is cited in his profile), CEO of SmartBiz Bank and Chair of the Board.
  • Role in PPP: Marketplace and software layer routing PPP applications to partner banks, including as a named partner in Womply's 2021 Fast Lane channel. Not a lender of record in SBA data.

Pandemic-role map

  • Reader shorthand: an application platform: more than a lead page, less than a lender of record.
  • What SmartBiz did for borrowers: turned complex SBA credit into a faster digital workflow: intake, packaging, underwriting automation, and routing to partner banks.
  • What SmartBiz sold to other companies: licensed origination software to its partner banks to automate underwriting for referred loans.
  • Where responsibility sat: partner banks approved, funded, and held the PPP loans; Womply's 2021 Fast Lane page listed SmartBiz (like Lendio) among its partners ; the lender-vs-platform classification is from the Womply profile's fuller partner table.

Before the pandemic (mid-2010s–early 2020)

SmartBiz pivoted from online consumer lending into an SBA 7(a) marketplace that licensed origination software to partner banks and matched small-business customers to them (Banking Exchange interview). In February 2018 the company said it had surpassed JPMorgan Chase as the number-one provider of SBA 7(a) loans under $350,000 facilitated through its platform (Alliance of Chief Executives item).

During the pandemic (March 2020 – mid 2021)

PPP through partner banks

SmartBiz applied its SBA marketplace to PPP, connecting borrowers to its network of partner banks. The U.S. Chamber's 2021 fintech-PPP guide placed SmartBiz among companies assisting with the preparation of PPP applications for SBA-approved partner banks; in July 2020 the company published survey work on PPP demand (Business Wire; our copy is cited in the Evan Singer profile).

The Womply channel

The March 3, 2021 Womply Fast Lane capture names SmartBiz Loans among the platform's partners, alongside Cross River, Harvest Small Business Finance, Fountainhead, Funding Circle, and Lendio.

Scale, as reported by the company

SmartBiz reports having facilitated more than $9 billion across PPP, SBA 7(a) and bank term loans for 230,000+ entrepreneurs (2022 release; our copy is cited in the Evan Singer profile); those are company figures spanning more than PPP, and no SmartBiz-specific PPP volume is verifiable from SBA data because the loans sit on partner-bank rows.

After the pandemic (mid 2021 – present)

No enforcement action or PPP-fraud finding against SmartBiz has been located; it does not appear in the House Select Subcommittee's fintech-PPP report. The company later presented itself as SmartBiz Bank (company site), with Evan Singer as CEO and Board Chair (board release; our copy is cited in his profile).

  • Evan Singer — CEO
  • Lendio — marketplace peer classified the same way in Womply's table

Sources

In this archive

  • Womply Fast Lane partner capture: womply ppp faq about fast lane 2021-03-03
  • Archived SmartBiz-related profile sources: smartbizbank com; www bankingexchange com

External references

Back to top